“Cycle of Opportunity”
During 1976 Robert Black, the infamous convicted child sex killer got a job
with a London Firm as a van driver delivering posters all over the United
Kingdom and he would regularly do the London to Edinburgh runs over the
next 14 years. It is during this period that he was actively engaged in the
abduction rape and murder of young teenagers and preteen girls.
Whether April Fabb was one of his earlier victims is not known but her
disappearance some nine years prior to the disappearance of Genette Tate
and the murder of Jennifer Cardy in 1981 has glaring similarities. Black at that
time was living in London having been released from a Falkirk Borstal after
one year for child abuse having previously committed an attempted murder on
a seven year old girl during 1963 when he was aged 17. He did not hold a
driving licence at this time but importantly he did incur traffic convictions prior
to the acquisition of one and it is known that he had access to at least 4
vehicles at various times during that period:
A White Hillman Imp.
A Blue Vauxhall Victor.
A Green Ford Zephyr.
A Blue Ford Anglia.
Black was aged 23 at the time of April Fabb’s abduction and disappearance. It
was also reported in the press after his 1990’s conviction that Black had
visited Norfolk on a regular basis.
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“April Fabb”
On Tuesday the 8th of April 1969 the day after Easter Monday I worked a late
turn foot beat at King’s Lynn when one of Norfolk’s biggest mysteries occurred
during that afternoon. April Fabb a shy thirteen year old a few days off her
fourteenth birthday and on her Easter school holidays set off from her home at
Metton which is close to Cromer to cycle the two miles to her Sister’s home in
Roughton near Cromer to give her Brother In Law a packet of cigarettes as a
birthday present for his birthday on Easter Monday, but she never made it
along that country lane.
She was seen at 2.06pm that afternoon cycling along and stopped by a field
containing a donkey where she met 2 girls who were playing with the donkey
and April joined them briefly before continuing her journey. She was last seen
at 2.12pm by a Land Rover driver about to turn right into Back Lane towards
Roughton; just 3 minutes later her Blue and White cycle was found lying on its
side where it had been thrown over a six foot high bank into a field in Back
Lane.
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April’s fateful last journey
A view along Back Lane heading towards Roughton
April would not complete this journey her cycle finished up in the field to the
left
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Two vehicles were in the area during the material time were never traced they
were a vaguely described grey car and a newish looking Red Mini with new
type reflective number plates, now the latter should have turned up as
reflective number plates were not law until nearly four years later the 1st of
January 1973. But it is possible that this vehicle could have been a brand new
unregistered vehicle off the production line and being driven to a garage on
Red On White “Stop On Sight” Garage Showroom Trade Plates, which
comprised of 3 numbers and up to 3 letters e.g. 123ABC.
A 1964 Austin Mini
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Metton’s Geographical Location Note The A140 & A148 And Interlinking Roads
Full details of April’s story and the hunt for her are in a book written and
dedicated to her memory and tests the original investigation by one of my ex
bosses retired Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Morson who inherited
the outstanding enquiry from Det Chief Superintendent Reg Lester during
1983 when Reg retired; it is entitled “The Lost Years”.
Up until the time of April Fabb’s disappearance and the next decade when
Robert Black was on the prowl it was a rarity for children to be abducted and
murdered. Any reports of children being enticed into vehicles was regarded by
all East Anglian and other Police Forces as “high alert” action and subsequent
transmissions of intelligence to neighbouring Forces. Jeanne (who is now my
Wife) was nearly such a statistic and on this occasion certain members of
Cambridgeshire Constabulary let her and the system down big-time.
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Strange encounters of a sinister kind
Again in a glaringly similar set of circumstances to the disappearances of April
Fabb, Genette Tate and Jennifer Cardy something nearly happened to
Jeanne which traumatised her and affects her to this day and one that she
has never come to terms with. During the early summer of 1971 Jeanne was a
shy just turned fifteen year old under-developed girl who would easily pass for
a ten year old. On one hot Sunday morning during June or July she cycled
from her home in Offord D’Arcy situated between Huntingdon and St Neots in
Cambridgeshire with her swimming bag the some five miles to the open-air
baths at St Neots via the quiet and seldom used by strangers B1043 road as it
is by-passed by the A1 Great North Road. One village en-route is that of
Great Paxton situated just off the main A1 and some 50 miles from London.
After her swim Jeanne during the middle afternoon retraced her route back
home for tea and when she was about a mile into her journey and close to the
outskirts of Great Paxton she came across a dog lead lying in the carriageway
and being an animal lover stopped to look at it.
It is quite apparent to me looking back that the lead had been deliberately
planted there as a lure in order to distract her attention. She then became
aware of a man in a Blue Mini travelling in the opposite direction slowing down
and stopped opposite her staring at her legs.
Jeanne started cycling fast towards Great Paxton and the vehicle came back
behind her and passed very slowly. She saw it pull sharply at an angle into a
field entrance and the driver get out and walk to the rear offside and stand by
the vehicle. She describes him as a small thin faced man. She was by now
panic stricken and instinctively cycled furiously past the parked vehicle on the
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off-side of the road. She then went into the driveway of the first house that she
came to and there was no one in. Jeanne then got back on her bike and
cycled into Great Paxton. Her would be abductor had obviously by now been
scared off thinking that she lived there. Jeanne still hysterical knocked on a
cottage door in Great Paxton and reported the incident to the lady occupant
and a bit later her husband took Jeanne and her bike home to her parents and
the police were called.
The Modus Operandi or Method Used bore all of the hallmarks employed in
the later series of abductions and/or murders committed by the likes of Robert
Black.
As far as Black goes no photos have been released to the public as to how he
looked then.
As far as the Mini was concerned it was dark Blue in colour and either a
Saloon or more probably a Mini Van. The significant fact that Jeanne
remembered was that the index plate contained 777 in the makeup this could
so easily have been narrowed down and there was a good chance that had
the police taken the matter seriously and the details passed to all of their
Divisions and Surrounding Forces via Radio, Telex and other circulations that
the offender would have been traced and may well have solved other
outstanding enquiries.
Mini Saloon
Mini Van
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Going from 1960 the registration number or index plate would have been
made up of three letters three numbers and no suffix, i.e.:
1960: ???777.
From 1963 and so on it would have been made up thus:
1963: ???777A.
1964: ???777B.
1965: ???777C.
1966: ???777D.
1967: ???777E.
1968: ???777F.
1969: ???777G.
1970: ???777H.
I have fully categorised Black’s crimes and what others he is suspected for in
a separate article but having a vested interest in the above two matters I will
delve further into Black’s timeline here but with only having information
gathered from the public domain.
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Places of interest in Scotland applicable to Robert Black
A. Kinlochlevan where he grew up and later returned in the mid 1966/67
age 19/20 to Appin Road and committed an indecent assault on a 6
year old.
B. Greenock where he was a butcher’s delivery boy age 16 during 1963
and committed offence amounting to attempted murder of 8 year old in
Air raid shelter.
C. Musselburgh where he was in a Children’s Home from 1959 until1962
aged 12 years to 15 years.
D. Portobello age 8/9 went to swimming baths 1955/6. Returned and
abducted Caroline Hogg from a fun fair during 1983.
E. Falkirk went to a Children’s Home and Grammar School age 11 during
1958 and part of 1959.
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Robert Black was born on the 21st of April 1947 at Grangemouth, about 20
miles from Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth in Scotland he was given up at birth
for fostering and placed in care by Social Services; he shares his Birthday
with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11. During October 1947 at age 6 months
he was fostered out to Jack and Margaret Tulip in Kinlochlevan near Glencoe
in the West Highlands where he lived for the next decade. At the age of 5
Jack Tulip died and Black had recurring nightmares which ended in him bed
wetting and a beating; at school he was known as “Smelly Robbie Tulip” and
being a loner he resented the other children and got into scrapes and bullied
the younger and more vulnerable kids.
His first sexual experience was when he was only 5 during 1952 and he later
vividly recalled himself and a little girl undressing and looking at each other’s
sexual parts and during 1954 at the age of 7 he remembers at Highland
Dance classes being far more interested in lying on the floor and looking up
girl’s skirts than dancing. He would also watch his foster mother getting out at
night to use the potty under the bed and would see her hairy private parts;
smooth hairless vaginas held a far more appeal. During 1955 at the age of 8
while looking after a neighbour’s baby he took off her nappy to look at her
vagina during this time both vaginas and anuses fascinated him and he was
obsessed with discovering how big they could expand and how much they
could hold.
Margaret Tulip died during 1958 when Black was 11 and he was deprived of a
mother for the second time he was moved to Redding Children’s Home near
Falkirk and he went to West quarter Primary School near Falkirk, Stirlingshire,
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to the north-east of Glasgow .The following photograph is the face of a later
serial sex murderer of children.
Robert Black Age 11
At 11+ he went to Musselburgh Grammar a Secondary Education school in
Scotland and was slightly above average academically but he was very keen
on football, billiards, table tennis, weight lifting, swimming and athletics. It was
during this time that his fascination with sex and particularly with the vagina,
finally drove him across the line from childhood experimentation to criminal
behaviour. The fascination with the secret of birth the hidden contents of the
womb was clearly exacerbated by the loss of a second mother. When he was
age 12 during 1959 Black made his first inept attempt at rape. He told Ray
Wyre who later interviewed him in prison: “Me and two other boys went to a
field with a girl the same age. We took her knickers off lifted her skirt and tried
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to put our penises in.” Finding that they couldn’t complete the act of
penetration the boys contented themselves instead with touching the girl’s
vagina. When Ray Wyre later asked Black if she had consented to this he told
Wyre: “I was forcing her like, you know.” The incident came to light and the
authorities decided that Black would be better suited to a home with stricter
discipline and an all-male environment.
Black was then moved to Red House in Musselburgh at some time during
1959 and he was to stay there until he left school at age 15 during the end of
the summer term of 1962; during this time he was homosexually abused by a
male member of staff since deceased. Even before his time at Red House
Black had associated sex with dominance and submission and now it was
firmly cemented in his mind; and he concluded that it was acceptable to take
what you wanted without regard to other people’s feelings. Black obtained a
place and went to Musselburgh Grammar School he was slightly above
average academically but it was sport that he was really interested in,
especially football swimming and athletics. He often walked from Musselburgh
to nearby Portobello where there were two swimming pools in which he would
practice. Over 20 years later a little girl Caroline Hogg was to be abducted
from Portobello and later murdered; her house was on the route between the
two swimming pools.
In the summer of 1962 when Black was 15 he left Red House and his time
was up at Musselburgh School. The authorities arranged for him to get a job
as a Butcher’s delivery boy on a trade bike and also a room to rent in a Boy’s
Home in Greenock. He later admitted to Ray Wyre that while he was doing his
delivery rounds he molested 30 or 40 girls. He said “If there was a girl on her
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own in the flats where I was delivering I’d like sit down and talk to her for a few
minutes like you know, and try and touch her, I sometimes succeeded
sometimes not.” Amazingly none of this behaviour seems to have been
reported and it was not until a year later that Black’s first conviction came
about otherwise he would have been incarcerated and coupled with the Social
Services previous knowledge he would not have been at large to prey on his
next victim and subsequent ones.
Sometime during 1963 when Black was 16 he went into a local park in
Greenock and watched children playing, until one 7 year old was left isolated
on her own and he befriended her and gained her trust (like some 20 years
later with Caroline Hogg) and gave her a push on the swings. He then told her
that he had some kittens and would she like to see them the little girl trustingly
went with him as he led her to a deserted air raid shelter, passing a policeman
on the way. In the air raid shelter he strangled the girl until she was
unconscious and then proceeded to molest her whilst he was masturbating
and ejaculated over her. He later told Ray Wyre “I took her inside and I held
her down on the ground with my hand round her throat…I must have halfstrangled her or something because she was unconscious…When she was
quiet I took her knickers off and I lifted her up so as I was holding her behind
her knees and her vagina was wide open and I poked my finger in there
once.”
Most importantly when we look at his later necrophilic crimes that he was
convicted of, her lack of consciousness far from detracting from his pleasure,
enhanced it. When he left the girl in that derelict building he didn’t know or
care whether she was unconscious or dead. She was later found wandering
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the streets with a ruptured hymen, bleeding, crying and confused but the next
day she managed to identify the astonished Black who had left her for dead.
Once again the Judiciary let a lot of Black’s future victims down when he went
to Court on 25 June 1963 charged not with Indecent Assault and Attempted
Murder but for lewd and libidinous behaviour. A naïve psychiatric report had
been prepared for the Court who said the event was an isolated one! Highly
unlikely to recur or mar Black’s normal development!
Instead of being imprisoned for a large number of years Black was given a
suspended sentence as later events were to prove he should have been
suspended from a rope.
Unlike the psychiatric report however the Social Services Probation Report
viewed the incident as more serious and it was decided that Black should
leave Greenock and return to Grangemouth to make a new start. Here he got
a job with a Builder’s Supply Company and rented a room with an older
couple. He also met his only real girlfriend and he fell in love developed a
sexual relationship with her and they decided to get engaged. After a few
months he was devastated to find a letter sent by her telling him that it was
over obviously she had become concerned for some reason about her
Fiancés sexual behaviour.
Great play was later made of the fact that Black was not driving until his
Poster Delivery and Storage (PDS) job in 1976 which gave him the
opportunity to travel far and wide to abduct and murder and various Senior
Police Detectives seemed unaware of what I have since uncovered.
During 1964 at age 17 and some 12 years before the PDS job Black firstly
drove as a delivery driver for the Glasgow Evening Times and then for John
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Menzies newspaper and magazine Distributors. He probably drove for over 2
years from 1964 to 1966 and this would have given him the opportunity to
drive over a wide area of Southern Scotland and who knows how many
attempted abductions/indecent assaults were made by him on young girls
during this period.
During 1966 at age 19 his continuing offending came to light when the 9 year
old granddaughter of his landlord and landlady in Falkirk made a complaint to
her parents that Black had molested her which included looking at touching
and digital exploration inside her vagina. Again a lot of future victims were let
down for the third time when it was felt that the girl had been through enough
and Black was ordered to leave the rented accommodation. Gossip spread
quickly in the small town of Falkirk and he was sacked from his job without
reason and his place in the community undermined Black at age 19 then
suddenly resurfaced in Kinlochlevan some 100 miles from Falkirk the place of
his boyhood upbringing that he had left some 8 years previously. The firm that
he was then employed with won a contract to work in the area. He found
lodgings in Appin Road with a family who had been friends with his Foster
Mother. During this period Black was again employed as a driver and he was
also a peeping tom and the village post woman caught him peering through a
window at her sister.
However it was only a short time after his previous offending that Black again
came to the attention of his new landlord and landlady. He had been carrying
out the same unwanted sexual offending that had become commonplace for
him when babysitting their 6 year old daughter and was carrying out the digital
examination of her private parts. On this occasion the police were called and
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arrived at a bar where he was drinking and arrested him and he was taken to
the local police station. He admitted 3 specimen accounts and on 22 March
1967 a month before he was age 20, he was sent to Borstal for one year at
Polmont near Grangemouth.
Upon his release sometime during 1968 Black now age 21 moved into a
Probation Hostel in Glasgow and when he left there for two convictions
against young girls there was no supervision and no follow up he disappeared
from authorities view. After a brief period in a nearby bedsit and an arrest for
loitering with intent to steal from Glasgow shops he had tired of his native
Scotland where he was getting too well known to the police and public alike,
so he headed south to the anonymity of London and firstly to Stamford Hill.
There he first took a cheap bedsit in Bergholt Crescent and then shortly after
he moved to another one in Albion Road, Stoke Newington a couple of miles
further south; this was to become his bolt hole for the next 3 years and where
his paedophile offending continued unabated and undetected.
At first he took up an attendant job on a six month trial at the nearby Clissold
Road Swimming Pool just a five minute walk and a third of a mile from his
digs, there he doubled as a life guard and it gave him an ideal opportunity to
see little girls in their bathing suits and touch them.
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Showing (1) Clissold Road Swimming Baths (2) Clissold Park Paddling Pool
He supplemented the poor wages as an evening bar man at various local
pubs in and around Church Street, Stoke Newington and bars became the
centre of his limited social life either as a regular drinker or as an above
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average amateur darts player at one of a dozen pubs scattered around Stoke
Newington and he became a fixture of the area.
Some pub regulars took pity on the short at 5’7” athletic and articulate lonely
odd young man who spoke with a “Sean Connery” Scottish accent and who
had a very strong body odour and whose hair then was light brown thinning
and rapidly receding. He was eventually sacked from the swimming pool job
for poor time keeping as not surprisingly he couldn’t get up in the mornings
and he concentrated on bar work and other casual jobs.
During his early 20’s and whilst living in Albion Road and doing casual work
he was given a trial with Enfield Town FC but his poor eyesight let him down
from becoming a professional and he concentrated on his swimming. Enfield
Town Football Club then located at Southbury Road was adjacent to the main
A10 out of London some 7 miles north of where Black lived.
Black continued to live in the bedsit from 1968 until the end of the summer in
1971 and he had a few casual jobs and during one spring he saw an advert
for a job in an open air pool which he got and worked the whole summer
season from May until September. This pool was most probably the one which
was situated in Clissold Park less than a mile away from his digs where he
would have been residing when April Fabb would go missing during the
Easter Holidays of 1969 and the late spring/early summer of 1971 when
Jeanne Twigden’s attempted abduction occurred.
At the end of that employment he applied for a job at Hornsey Road
Swimming Baths and worked there for a few years on alternating weeks of
early and late shifts.
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Hornsey Road Swimming Baths
During the autumn of 1971 Black after living there for the best part of 3 years
suddenly became unhappy with his Albion Road accommodation had another
landlady become concerned about Black’s behaviour in the neighbourhood?
He was playing darts in the Three Crowns pub in Stoke Newington when he
met the couple who would provide him with a home for the next 21 years.
Edward and Katherine Rayson were fellow Scots formerly of Musselburgh,
where Black had been in a Children’s Home and Black told them that he was
unhappy with his digs in Albion Road. Katherine Rayson felt sorry for him and
persuaded her husband to allow Black to move into their spare attic room and
so he moved back to Stamford Hill and settled less than ½ mile a mile away
from his original digs at Bergholt Crescent with the Rayson family of 5 boys
and 2 girls in an attic room at 7 West Bank running up one side of Amhurst
Park where he would remain until his arrest for abduction in 1990.
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Black’s Attic bolt hole at 7 West Bank Stamford Hill
Black continued his job as a lifeguard/attendant at Hornsey Road Swimming
Pool Islington where he was sometimes able to go underneath the pool and
remove the lights to look at little girls as they swam. At night he used to break
into the baths and swim lengths-with a broom handle lodged up his anus. It
wasn’t long before Black became the subject of a complaint from a girl who
claimed he had touched her up. The police were called but again luck was on
Black’s side and despite his previous sexual record astonishingly he was not
arrested or charged with any offence although he was forced to leave. It was
around this time that he had discovered child pornography being available at
under counter premises and he had amassed a sizeable collection of the
worst type of magazine and cine film (later video tape) child pornography
imaginable. He used to go to a place near King’s Cross to buy them and later
made trips to Amsterdam and Denmark to obtain them. When he was arrested
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during 1990 and his room searched the Metropolitan Police recovered over a
hundred magazines as well as over 50 cine and video tapes.
Black was also a good barman and he earned the trust of one of his pub
husband and wife employers and babysat their six children when they went
out; occasionally he would take these children swimming at the local pool.
However most other parents who he came into contact with became uneasy
about him in the company of their children after a short time. He drank in
about a dozen other pubs in the Stoke Newington area during the 1970’s. It
would appear that he was also well known in that local area of London as
when he was not working he was a regular member of one of a number of
local darts teams.
Black was also a keen photographer and whilst living with the Rayson’s at
West Bank he had amassed an impressive array of photographic and video
equipment and sometimes jokingly called him “David Bailey” a reference to a
famous photographer of those times. It later transpired that one of his
favourite pastimes was to go to the seaside or a playground which was
frequented by young children and video them playing or take snap-shots of
them; did he go to Cromer in Norfolk during 1969?
Further research reveals that Robert Black’s former addresses are all located
within a half mile of the main A10 which links London to King’s Lynn in Norfolk
where a further couple of miles up the A149 links with the main A148 direct to
Cromer. The main A11 runs out of London only 2 miles south east which in
those days before the M11 was built was the direct link to Norwich and where
it terminates at Norwich this directly links with the A140 road to Roughton and
Cromer.
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Thirdly the A1 Great North Road runs out of London near to Highbury fields
and only a mile from Albion Road this runs immediately adjacent to St Neots
in Cambridgeshire on its way to Peterborough and the north. Similarly Albion
Road is also strategically placed by the A10 and just a short distance to the
south both the A1 and A11 link to it via London Wall and Houndsditch; so
Black had 3 very significant main trunks roads right on his doorstep during
1969, 1970 and 1971.
Additionally if you take the A1 from London to Peterborough this links directly
with the A15 and this will take you directly north via Lincoln to Scunthorpe
where in 1973 a 9 year old by the name of Christine Markham disappeared.
3 Significant Routes Out Of London
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(A) Albion Road (B) 7 West Bank (C) The Baring Arms
(D)Intersection of the A1 the A10 and the A11
Significantly one of Black’s convictions whilst living in London was on the 22
September 1972 at North London MC for stealing cars and going equipped
with a bunch of keys this was some 4 years before gaining a driving licence
and employment with Poster Dispatch & Storage during 1976 when he was
driving their vans nationally and internationally. Black would have needed
prior substantial driving experience and a good navigational knowledge,
including that of the arterial roads out from and back into The Capital. The
circumstances leading to Black’s conviction was on the 26 August 1972 he
was arrested by PC 356 “N” Robertson with a bunch of car keys and being
carried in a stolen Ford Zephyr car and he admitted another similar offence;
who was his co-accused? His antecedent sheet listed that he was a wood
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machinist by trade and that he frequented the “Horse & Groom” Public House
located at 105 Church Street, Stoke Newington since renamed “Auld
Shillelagh”.
When Black was interviewed in Prison following his arrest during the 1990’s
by Ray Wyre, a Sex Crime Counsellor he was described as being a small man
no more than 5’7”, but powerfully built; just the sort of upper body strength
needed to throw a cycle into a field.
The body odour had never left Black and to the Rayson children be became
known amongst them as “Smelly Bob” but he appeared to take this title
without resentment and he attended their family occasions over the years,
including Christenings.
By the mid-70’s Black’s drinking establishments fetched a little further afield
and they included the “Baring Arms” Pub in Baring Street N1 just a couple of
miles away to the south of West Bank where he surfaced during 1977. Former
World Champion darts player Eric Bristow knew him in those days, and I
would have thought that there would be team photos including him and a lot of
untapped information from the by now veteran regulars.
During 2012 I contacted the Hackney Gazette and on Friday 17 August 2012
they published the below report:
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25
As a result of the above article I had only one contact, however an important
one as the following e-mail extracts portray:
26
27
With regard to the last e-mail it is quite significant that Black was talking
during 1983 about the murder of 14 year old Suzanne Lawrence who was
reported as a missing person during July 1979 and was last seen at a funfair
in Highbury, London and thought to have run away with it, Highbury is very
close to Robert Black’s then haunts.
Her disappearance only made the local Romford area papers and her name
was an unknown quantity until after Black’s arrest during 1990, so there he is
talking about her murder some 7 years before she became a known possible
victim.
Further to that again Christine Markham who went missing during 1973 was
not a household name during the 1980’s outside of her native Scunthorpe.
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Also Mary Boyle age 5 went missing on the 18th March 1977 from
Ballyshannon in Ireland, this story probably never made it to the British
Mainland and this would be one of the Irish girls referred to.
Susan Maxwell
Caroline Hogg
3 and 4 for Sarah Harper
Artist’s impressions of men wanted in connection with the abduction of the three
missing girls issued between 1982 and 1986
Robert Black 1982
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Robert Black Circa 1985
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31
Robert Black 1990
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